Biochemistry - Chemical Reactions in Living Cells, Volume 1 - D. Metzler 1980

The Setting
The Simplest Living Organisms
High Metabolic Rate in Bacteria

The most remarkable feature of Bacteria is their extraordinarily high rate of METABOLISM and growth. Under favorable conditions, a bacterial Cell doubles in size and divides in just 20 min. Animal Cells take 24 h to complete this cycle. Equally astonishing is the speed at which bacteria convert food components into other substances. This high metabolic rate in bacteria is attributed to the high surface-area-to-volume ratio (see also Ch. 3, Sec. A.5). For small spherical bacteria (cocci) with a diameter of 0.5 μm, the surface-area-to-volume ratio is 12∙106 m-1, whereas for an amoeba with a diameter of 150 μm this ratio is only 4∙104 m-1, though it increases rapidly if the amoeba forms pseudopodia. According to Thimann [7], for a 90 kg human, the surface-area-to-volume ratio is only 30 m-1.



Last update: 06/08/2026

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